


you always say i'm wrong (i'm pretty sure i'm right)

by CrimsonPetrichor



Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, Slice of Life, and the author was COPING WITH INFINITY WAR! oh my God she was coping with Infinity War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 17:20:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15224033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrimsonPetrichor/pseuds/CrimsonPetrichor
Summary: It’s an unquestionably gorgeous day in Queens, and Michelle is staring at her computer, willing three hundred and twenty-seven words to spontaneously appear on her screen so she can actually experience the five minutes of nice spring weather that New York is annually allotted.





	you always say i'm wrong (i'm pretty sure i'm right)

**Author's Note:**

> [rolls back up to the Homecoming fandom 11 months late with Starbucks and two thousand words of unapologetic fluff]
> 
>  
> 
> ~~do I have to tell you guys the title is a lyric from Khalid's "Young Dumb & Broke" because I feel like you probably picked up on that~~

It is an unquestionably gorgeous day in Queens. The sun is out, there’s a breeze blowing, and it’s not hot enough yet that you regret all your life choices as soon as you set foot outside your door.

It’s an unquestionably gorgeous day in Queens, and Michelle is staring at her computer, willing three hundred and twenty-seven words to spontaneously appear on her screen so she can actually experience the five minutes of nice spring weather that New York is annually allotted.

A year ago, when Liz had first emailed her about Empire State University’s Women in Journalism Initiative, it already sounded too good to be true. One application, twelve panicked emails to Liz, and six months later, Michelle knows that’s not exactly the case, but she doesn’t mind.

She’s covered her chosen topic — the real world implications of publicity-friendly “urban outreach” programs — from every possible angle and lived all the major journalist stereotypes while doing it. She’s bribed and befriended employees at city archives, she’s missed dates with Peter to go undercover as a volunteer, she’s used public records and Ned’s hacking skills to follow about thirty different money trails to tax shelter islands in the Caribbean. 

All of that work has led up to this: a fifteen hundred word piece on the very rich, very sketchy Church of Gibborim that’ll get printed in the next weekend edition of the _Manhattan_ _Ledger_ — if she can ever finish writing it, that is.

Still staring at the screen, she reaches to take a bracing sip of tea and winds up with a mouthful of something cold and bitter. She peers into the mug to make sure she didn’t just drink paint water, then throws the rest of the contents back in one gulp. It’s not pleasant, but she thought she’d be done with her article by now, and going down to make a fresh cup would just be conceding defeat. She’s going to sit at this desk until she has more than three words to show for a morning of work.

“The question becomes…” she reads aloud for the hundredth time. “The question becomes, the question becomes...I don’t know what the question becomes.”

Michelle groans and drops her head to rest against the lip of her desk. Outside her room, the doorbell rings and she hears her ten-year-old sister barreling across the hallway and down the stairs to answer it. For a second, she’s irrationally irritated that other people are out there enjoying their Saturdays while she’s trapped herself behind a screen.

“Who even  _ wants _ to be a journalist? Who even wants to go to college?” she asks absolutely no one, forehead still pressed to the tabletop. There’s more noise from the hallway as her sister comes up the stairs and Michelle sighs. “Fuck college. Fuck journalism. I’m becoming a professional hermit.”

She gets about three seconds to be satisfied with her new career path before someone bangs on her door. “Michelle!” her sister Olivia shouts, entirely too loud for this time of day.

“What?” Michelle bellows back.

“Open your door!”

Michelle rolls her eyes. “I’m  _ working _ !”

“But I brought you something!”

She really shouldn’t encourage Olivia to be this loud or disruptive, but the hope that ‘something’ might be a cup of tea knowingly sent up by her mother is too strong a pull to ignore. She pushes back from the desk, picking her way around the notecards scattered over her floor. 

“This better be important, Olivia,” she says as she opens the door, “because you know you’re not supposed-”

But instead of her younger sister holding a mug of tea, the door opens on a grinning Peter Parker. “Hey, MJ,” he says, shifting the paper bag in his arms to give her a wave.

She tamps down the instinct to smile back at him, trying to arrange her expression into something unimpressed. “What are you doing here, Parker? You know I still have to finish the article, and then the stuff for Ms. Warren, and-”

“Oh, no, don’t worry,” Peter cuts in. “I’m not here to bother you. I just wanted to say hi. I’m actually here for Olivia.” 

Michelle furrows her eyebrows. “You’re...what?”

“Peter’s gonna help me with my robot,” her sister says, stepping out from behind him. “He says if we work all afternoon, we can even make it dance.”

“Oh,” says Michelle, blinking. “Uh, okay. Don’t blow anything up, all right?”

“We’ll do our best,” Peter says, while Olivia waves Michelle off and says something about going to get her toolbox.

It is ridiculous, Michelle tells herself, to be jealous that your boyfriend is choosing to hang out with your baby sister and help her build a robot. It is especially ridiculous to be jealous when it’s the exact way you hoped they’d bond the first time you introduced them. 

She’s just going to have to come to terms with being ridiculous, she decides and shifts gears. “How did a ten year old summon you to be her lab assistant when she doesn’t even have a phone?” she asks Peter. “Is there a Spi- uh,  _ Parker _ -signal on our roof that I don’t know about?”

“I think she got my number from Liz, but now I kind of want to try the Parker-signal thing.”

The corner of her mouth might twitch a little, but she manages not to laugh. “That seems more like Ned’s department,” she says. “I’m gonna get back to work. Have fun with the robots.”

“I have to go on a retrieval mission first, actually,” Peter says, just as she’s about to head back into her room. “Olivia says she left O3 with Miles, so-”

“Wait, she left  _ what _ ?”

“She...left the robot? With her friend? Miles?”

Michelle crosses her arms. “No, no, I know who Miles is, and I know she left the robot with him. I’m asking you what you called the thing she left with Miles.”

He grins. “O3. It’s the robot’s name.”

She looks at him for a moment, eyes narrowed. “That’s not its entire name, is it?”

“Nope.”

“You guys named the robot like a droid from Star Wars, didn’t you?”

Peter’s grin gets impossibly wider. “I hope you’re ready to welcome O3-P3 to the Jones family.”

“I cannot  _ believe _ you turned my sister into a giant nerd this quickly,” she says, shaking her head.

“I’m not sure I can take the credit for that. I just showed her how to channel her nerd powers, like a-“

“If you say ‘Jedi master’ right now, I swear-”

“Mentor,” he says. “I was gonna say mentor, but I like the sound of Jedi master way better.”

“That’s it, I’m breaking up with you.”

“Oh,” says Peter, frowning as he peers into the paper bag in his arms. “Well, I mean, this coffee was supposed to be a thoughtful gesture for my girlfriend, but I guess I can give it to-”

She reaches for it before he can finish his sentence. “Nope, you brought it here for me and it’s mine now.”

He laughs as he hands her a shiny travel mug with the Stark logo stamped on the side. Michelle can feel his eyes on her as she flips back the catch on the mug, but she can’t quite figure out why he’s looking so intently until she actually takes a sip. 

“Parker,” she says slowly, “this is Arabic coffee.”

“Yes it is.”

She gives him a look. “Where’d you get Arabic coffee in Forest Hills? It’s not like you swung all the way out to Bay Ridge just to get this.”

Peter just shrugs, though, and the penny drops.

There are things that rise to Michelle’s lips immediately — ‘you did this for me?’ and ‘you didn’t have to’ and ‘that is both sweet and ridiculous and now I have to break up with you because if you keep being thoughtful like this I’m going to lose my reputation as a stoic badass just by association’ — but she stops herself from saying them. Instead, she goes with, “But- but how is it still so hot? And how did none of it spill?”

“The mug’s a Stark Industries prototype,” he says, suddenly very interested in the floor. “I might have, uh, borrowed it?”

“You stole a prototype from Tony Stark’s lab.”

“It was in the break room, not a lab! And all the interns use them, so basically, it’s like I took it to my cubicle and just forgot to bring it back.”

“Except in this case, the cubicle is your girlfriend’s house, which is a full two hours away from your actual cubicle.”

At this, Olivia sticks her head out of her room. “Girlfriend? Didn’t you just say you were breaking up with him?”

“Mind your business, Olivia,” says Michelle, in what she feels is a pretty good imitation of their mother.

Olivia pulls a face but disappears into her room again, like she’s not still eavesdropping from just beyond the doorway. Michelle rolls her eyes and grabs Peter by the wrist, pulling him into her room and swinging the door shut. (Well, almost shut. It’s a sort-of enforced rule that the door can’t actually be closed while potential or current romantic interests are in the room. Olivia likes Peter, so she probably wouldn’t snitch on them, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.)

“She has a point, you know,” Peter says, wisely not acknowledging that it looks like a library threw up in her room. He carefully navigates the stacks of cards on the floor to cross over to her research board, examining the last few dates and names that she put up. “You did just say you were breaking up with me.”

He’s willfully being annoying and she should really have a clever retort on hand, except Michelle has just taken another sip of  _ qahwa _ and it is very hard to be sarcastic when the warmth of cardamom and being cared for is spreading through her veins and making her head feel clearer than it’s been in days.

“I’m too busy to break up with you right now,” she finally manages to say, turning to her desk so he can’t see her fighting a smile. “Check back with me in three days.”

“Good, ‘cause May would be devastated if it happened before she got a chance to cut out and frame your article for the Wall of Embarrassing Childhood Milestones.”

She lets herself smile then, and there’s no point in having her back to Peter because she’s sure he can hear it when she says, “So what picture do you think it’ll be replacing? My money’s on you and Ned as Chewie and Han or the one of you and Mr. Met.”

“Hey, there’s still plenty of room on that wall,” Peter says, vaguely affronted.

Michelle turns to look at him, still grinning as she leans back against her desk. “So Mr. Met, then?”

He shakes his head, laughing. “Yeah, probably Mr. Met.”

The silence that settles between them is comfortable and she could easily let it linger, but she figures that if she’s brave enough to publish a scathing indictment of one of America’s most influential organizations, the least she can do is open her mouth and try to meet the people in her life halfway.

“Thanks for the coffee, Parker,” she says. “But as much as I appreciate you saving my article, don’t you have like, an actual world to save today?”

“Solid point.”

“I know.”

“Counterpoint,” Peter says, and Michelle groans. “You’re definitely gonna save the world someday, so me saving you from burning out now is like an investment in saving the world later.”

“That’s gross,” she says, only sort of meaning it.

“I know,” he says with a bright grin. “So just to kind of get started on this whole investment thing, do you want to walk to Miles’ place with me and Olivia?”

New York’s favorite webhead is the most earnest loser in the world, she thinks affectionately. “You do know that Olivia’s totally going to make you take her to ice cream at Eddie’s afterwards, right?”

“That was a given,” Peter says as he crosses to the door. “So are you coming?”

It’s ridiculous that she’s not immune to the charms of Peter Parker’s smile yet, but then, there’s a lot of ridiculous happening in Michelle’s life today. At some point, she supposes, she’s just going to have to lean into it.

She pushes the top of her laptop closed and turns back to face him. “You get an hour, Parker, and if I’m not back by then, I’m making you run the Decathlon team’s drills for a month.”

He holds up his right hand like he’s swearing an oath. “You’ll be back in this spot in fifty-nine minutes, Avenger’s honor.”

“That’s absolutely not a real thing,” she laughs.

“Maybe, but you can’t prove it!” he calls over his shoulder as he heads into the hallway.

Ridiculous, she thinks again, and follows him out the door anyway.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> I would still fight eight to ten battles for these kids so it was fun to write them again. Let me know what you thought!


End file.
